Tech Theory from the Happy Octopus

Serndipity vs usability: the battle continues

Roughly a year ago in March 2010 Mathew Ingram wrote a post titled “Forget Paywalls – How About More Serendipity?” The article itself acted as a good summing up of a meme sweeping media thinkers at the time: the loss of randomness and rise of homogeny in the news-reading experience.

The argument went like this: As readers browse the squashed tree version of a newspaper their eye catches on unexpected content. Maybe it’s an article that’s been fit into a leftover portion of the page, or a picture that’s been substituted for unused advertising space. Suddenly (the argument goes) the reader will find themselves reading about child-weavers in India. It will unexpectedly speak to their soul. They will quit their job to spearhead labor movements in the third world. Serendipity.

I remember this one because its comments section contained this great anonymous post: “…serendipity is the great rationalization that generations of journalists have convinced themselves has some consumer value” . Consumer value is the important phrase here: the purpose of news is to inform, but the value to consumers is different. The value of honey is the concentrated calorie source, but we eat it for the sweet taste.

In the intervening year I think it’s become obvious that there are a couple of problems with the “serendipity mourning” meme. IE: One of the few advantages for traditional journalism’s use of the internet is that there’s just so darn much of it, but a vast, sparsely populated prairie can’t be explored int he same way as a small, dense neighborhood: who takes a stroll through the digital news anymore? We may make lightning strikes on favorite areas, but ever since Google switched our brains from from browsing to searching that’s the form most of us prefer when dealing with a large landscape.

But all this overlooks the more basic issue here: Serindipity as found in newspapers might be adverse to the most basic law of Web Usability: “Don’t make me think”. While it’s a great thing to unexpectedly delight and impress your users, it’s anathema to surprise them. Jeff Jarvis writes that Serindipity at its best serves to “satisfy a curiosity you didn’t know you had”. But that’s not quite serendipity – that’s actually the definition of a really good “related products” algorithm.

What it comes down to is this: delight in randomness only works in a situation where it’s replacing something boring. This sort of frisson occurs when an expected uninteresting experience is replaced by something enjoyable – when an amusing ‘news of the weird’, pops up where a “news of the regular” was expected. It’s the classroom delight of a rescheduled math quiz, or suddenly learning your straight-laced teacher has a tattoo: a feeling of sly relief over dodging an expected downer.

But! Without a captive audience already resigned to a dreary experience, these extras have no purpose. Rumors of a tattoo are uninteresting to kids who are clamoring to go to recess, and being detoured from the intended aim is frustrating. Frustration is the sworn enemy of usability, and should be ripped out of any webpage with extreme gusto.

I too wish it was possible to amble through the day’s articles and trip over the gems hiding among the mushrooms. But as long as readers are crying out for a more targeted reading experience, it seems a little silly to decry a lack of a less-targeted one.